Mitt Romney's long and arduous path to the Republican presidential nomination is officially over.

With a victory in Texas on Tuesday night, Mitt Romney secured the necessary delegates to clinch the Republican nomination that will be awarded in Tampa this summer.

"This was a big day by the way - 1,144. We finally got there," Romney said at a Las Vegas fundraiser on Tuesday night. "It's an honor and a privilege, an honor and a privilege, and a great responsibility. And I know the road to 1,144 was long and hard, but I also know that the road to 11/06, November 6, is also going to be long, it's going to be hard and it's going to be worth it because we're going to take back the White House and get America right again."

Shortly after the polls closed in Texas at 9 p.m. Tuesday night, Romney was projected to finally obtain the needed 1,144 delegates, according to The Associated Press.

With Texas allocating its 155 delegates proportionally, Romney had to win just 38 percent of the vote to finally nab the GOP nod, a mark he cleared easily with over 70 percent of the vote, although only a small percentage of the precincts were reporting.

Romney was not in the Lone Star State to be crowned the official winner, nor did he campaign in several other states that have voted in the past month. Instead, the newly minted GOP nominee was making a controversial appearance at a Las Vegas fundraiser with surrogate Donald Trump, who has raised eyebrows in recent days by repeatedly questioning President Barack Obama's birthplace. Romney hasn't disavowed Trump, though aides have said the GOP nominee believes the president was born in this country.

Trump responded to the series of jokes and attacks leveled at Romney for appearing alongside the real- estate mogul.

"He will be the man and he will carry us to victory, but much more importantly than us he will carry the country to victory because that's what we need," Trump told donors, who paid up to $50,000 to attend the event.

Trump, nor Romney, mentioned anything about where Obama was born during the fundraiser.

He was also joined in Las Vegas by previous opponent Newt Gingrich, who sought to defend Trump while continuing to insist that he believes Obama was born in the United States.

"We believe this is an American-born, job-killing president," Gingrich said in the lobby of the Trump International Hotel . "Other people may believe that he was born somewhere else and still kills jobs, but that's an argument over background."

Gingrich, who said there was no hope in trying to make Trump back off his birther quest, dismissed the idea that those who push the issue are making veiled racist remarks.

"I think that Obama creates very powerful emotions about him, largely because of the radicalism of his views," Gingrich said.

Romney spent Tuesday in Colorado and Nevada, two states that are considered swing states for the fall election.

After his initial presidential bid in 2008, Romney was always seen as the nominee-in-waiting, a cautious but inevitable front-runner for the GOP nod who was well-positioned this year. But he has always been viewed with deep skepticism by grass-roots conservatives and the path to the nomination was much longer than anticipated, marked with the booms and busts of almost all of his rivals.

First, there was former Texas Gov. Rick Perry, who raised plenty of money but couldn't find his footing on the national stage almost from the start. Now, Perry is trying tonight to bolster his credibility at home by backing a slate of state candidates, including Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst in a Senate primary.

Then, there was former Godfather's Pizza executive Herman Cain. Finally, Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum had their turns to challenge Romney for leading status among Republicans. It was Santorum in the end who gave Romney the toughest competition, but the former Pennsylvania senator dropped out of the race in early April after it became increasingly clear he would lose his own home state primary.

Those candidates, particularly Gingrich and Perry, aired some of the more negative attacks on Romney's record as a businessman and former head of private equity firm Bain Capital. Those same criticisms are now being echoed by the Obama campaign and are expected to be a major thrust of the fall campaign.

The longer-than-usual Republican primary was the result of new Republican National Committee rules that resulted in most states allocating their delegates proportionally. As a result, there were few winner-take-all states that would have allowed Romney to quickly boost his delegate count after it became clear he was the victor.

In 2008, Sen. John McCain clinched the GOP nod on March 4. But four years ago, under similar proportional rules governing the Democratic primary, Hillary Clinton didn't cede the nod to Obama until June 3.

This year, things went differently as states like Missouri, Illinois and Wisconsin took a turn in the primary spotlight, with Santorum finally calling it quits on April 10. Gingrich, whose campaign had been sputtering for far longer, ended his quest officially on May 2. Although he is still trying to amass delegates, Texas Rep. Ron Paul suspended his campaign on May 14.

Romney long ago moved into general election mode. The former Massachusetts governor has been intensely focused on the White House and made his campaign about attacking Obama.

Texas's primary results also means that Paul - who had 10 percent of the vote with less than 2 percent reporting - officially has no shot of being the nominee, even as his supporters have continued to push state convention takeovers to secure more convention delegates.

RNC Chairman Reince Priebus lauded Romney as the nominee, although the national party had already begun coordinating with the campaign and treating him as their standard-bearer.

"Gov. Romney will offer America the new direction we so desperately need," Priebus said in a statement. "We cannot afford four more years of President Obama's big government agenda, deficit spending, and attacks on American free enterprise."